Communication, Knowledge, Bodies and God

Written by James Sinclair
on the 2nd April 2007

Why is communication so difficult?

Sometimes I will talk to somebody, and think that I’m expressing
myself really clearly when I’m not. I seem to make perfect sense. Yet
when I hear what the other person says in response, it is obvious that
they heard something quite different from what I thought I said. What
seemed so clear and easily understandable to me, is apparently quite
opaque to the other person.

It happens all the time, and not just to me. For example, I frequently
observe Christians having an argument over some point of doctrine.
One person puts forward an idea X. The other person actually agrees
with X but is concerned about the consequences of taking idea X too
far, so they explain some of the flaws with X. Now, the first person is
fully aware of the flaws of idea X, but they still think it’s a good idea,
so they reiterate the good points about X. To the second person, it
sounds like the first person didn’t understand the dire consequences
of taking X too far, so they restate their understanding of X’s flaws.
And so on and so forth. Both of them agree that X is a good idea
but shouldn’t be taken too far. Yet a heated argument ensues. Over
nothing.

We make assumptions about things that cause us no end of trouble.
It happens with married couples all the time. For example, Eleanor
asks her husband Edward to put the washing out on the line. Edward
goes and hangs out the washing thinking what a good husband he
is for helping Eleanor out. He hangs out the washing with great care
because he knows Eleanor is rather particular about the washing. Each
shirt is pegged precisely 2 cm away from the next garment. Every sock
is folded exactly half-way along its length. He even plans his garment
placement so that the weight is evenly distributed around clothesline,
thus preserving its structural integrity. He fully expects Eleanor to
beam with pleasure at his obvious care and consideration. And yet,
when Eleanor comes out to view his handiwork, she is horrified. Why?
Because Edward pegged all the shirts to the line instead of hanging
them from coat-hangers.

How could Edward not know that shirts go on hangers? Hanging
them on the line leaves a crease and peg marks that Eleanor has
to iron out, adding to the mountain of work she already has to do.
She had even put the hangers very obviously next to the peg bucket
before he started. Why on earth would she put them there, if not for
hanging the shirts? It’s just so obvious. Does he not think? And so poor
Edward is crushed and resolves never to help with the housework
again. Eleanor consequently becomes convinced that Edward is both lazy
and mentally deficient.

All these kinds of problems occur, even when people grow up speaking
the same language, living in the same culture, walking around
similar places. It becomes even more complicated when people speak
different languages and come from different cultures. Sometimes I
wonder that we ever manage to communicate at all.

The embodied mind and subjectivity

Looking at things from a cognitive perspective, we can see that all our
knowledge is situated and contextual. Whenever I learn something,
I learn it in a particular place, at a particular time, when I am in a
particular emotional state. For example, when I was in Year 11 at
school, I learned Newton’s Equations of Motion:

v = u + atv2 = u2 + 2ass = ut + ½at2

Don’t worry if they mean nothing to you. It’s not important. My
point is that thousands (probably millions) of other people have
learned those same equations, just like me. Those equations are the
same, no matter who learns them, but… nobody else learned those
equations in the same context that I did. Nobody sat in the same chair
in the same classroom at the same school that I did. Yet, when I think
about the equations of motion, I always remember that school, that
classroom, and my Physics teacher. I also remember when I learned
the calculus behind them in my maths class, and later at university.
My understanding of the equations of motion will always be coloured
and shaped by the context in which I learned them.
The strange outcome of this, is that it is entirely possible for us
to dislike abstract concepts. For example, if I disliked my Physics
teacher and found the equations difficult to understand, then I may
come to actually dislike Newton’s equations of motion. I can form
a negative preference toward a mathematical description of the way
objects move in a vacuum. The equations are not in any way affected
by my disregard for them. They don’t care if I think they’re stupid,
because they don’t really exist. They are just a bunch of symbols that
have an agreed meaning amongst a smallish group of educated human
beings. Is that not strange?

Why is it that we can feel emotions about abstract things like mathematical
equations? In their book, Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and
Johnson 1 write that all our knowledge and understanding is shaped
by the fact that we have bodies. We never learn anything in abstract.
We learn things at a certain point in time, feeling a certain way, in a
certain location. We learn things in a body. Even the way we think
and reason is shaped by the fact that we have eyes, hands, ears and
hormones that run through our bloodstream.

This means that there is no such thing as a disembodied, objective
human mind that is free from emotional attachment or irrationality.
We can never have a completely emotionless, disembodied, objective
view of anything. Everything is subjective.

Does this mean, then, that we are doomed to float in a sea of
meaningless relativism, unable to know anything or communicate with
anyone? Obviously not, or there would be no point to you reading this.
We somehow manage to know things and communicate with others,
however imperfectly. We can do this, because we all have a few things
in common that make communication and shared understanding
possible.

I mean to come back to this later, but the point is that we can
communicate because we all share the experience of having brains and
bodies. Unfortunately, we don’t share our brains or bodies with anyone
else. My brain and my body is different from your brain and your
body. Our experiences are entirely different too. Although we may
have a few general things in common like school, television, driving
in cars, etc. we probably didn’t go to the same school, watch the same
television, or drive in the same cars. So, I can never communicate
an exact imprint of what I know to you, because when I talk about
schools, cars and televisions, my words evoke different experiences
from the ones you had.

Categorisation

We have trouble communicating because we can’t get into each other’s
bodies and experience things as somebody else does. But that is just
the beginning of the problem. Categorisation makes the problem even
more complex.

Categorisation is the most fundamental building block of knowing
anything. As Lakoff and Johnson write:

Every living being categorizes. Even the amoeba categorizes
the things it encounters into food or nonfood, what
it moves toward or moves away from. The amoeba cannot
choose whether to categorize; it just does. The same is true
at every level of the animal world. Animals categorize food,
predators, possible mates, members of their own species,
and so on. How animals categorize depends on their sensing
apparatus and their ability to move themselves and to
manipulate objects. 2

Categorisation is essential to almost everything we do. Information
from our eyes is categorised into objects so we see a tree, grass, a
person, etc., instead of a mass of coloured dots. This allows us to
quickly process a scene, looking for important things like danger, food
or other people. We also learn by categorisation. We learn, for instance,
that certain objects are good for holding liquids and drinking out of.
When we recognise similar objects later, we then know that we can
drink out of them; saving us the trouble of performing trial-and-error
experiments.

Unfortunately, this learning aspect is yet another mechanism that
makes communication difficult. Our knowledge about categories is
continually being updated and refined as we interact with the world.
This causes problems for anyone trying to study categorisations at the
very basic level, because the very experiments set up to investigate
categorisation cause us to change and update our categories 3. It also
causes problems when I try to communicate. For example, what I mean
by the phrase ‘politically correct’ today may not be the same as what I
meant when I used the term two weeks ago. In the meantime, I may
have been to a seminar on diplomatic use of language and thus gained
a more subtle understanding of the phrase. On the other hand, I may
have heard a politician use a particularly amusing euphemism and that
also changes my category. These shifts and changes in categories mean
that not only does understanding vary greatly between individuals,
but even in the same person.

Our categories are also highly contextual. That is, when we categorise
things, we don’t just store information in our brains about
which things belong in a group, but also the contexts in which the
category is meaningful. We do this automatically and unconsciously.
Homonyms are a good example—where one word has several meanings.
For instance, the word cake refers to ‘a baked mass of bread or
substance of similar kind, distinguished from a loaf or other ordinary
bread, either by its form or by its composition’.4 However, in the
context of alternative music, Cake refers to the name of a band. In
the context of a political discussion, the phrase ‘everyone wants a
slice of the cake’ refers to a resource to be shared out. We work out
the meaning from the context. And when we communicate, we often
leave out a lot of contextual information because we are in the context.
When somebody else comes along, however, the context may not be
immediately apparent.

The upshot of all this is that categories don’t just vary between
different people, they vary within the same person. Categories change
over time and are arranged differently to suit different contexts. This
makes it difficult to communicate because even if I talk about a concert
we experienced together last week, our individual understandings
of it may have changed in the meantime. In addition, I might also
imagine that you immediately understand I mean last week’s concert.
You, on the other hand, may have been thinking about a concert next
week because you had just been in the process of buying tickets. Our
highly-adaptive brains make communication just that much harder.
This is just the beginning of our problems however.

Categorisation and language

Our difficulties in communicating with each other are further exacerbated
by the complexities of language. People used to think that
categorising and choosing a word to describe a category were pretty
much the same thing. That is, by naming something we categorise it
together with everything else of that name. Unfortunately, this is not
the case. The relationship between categorisation and words is much
more complicated 5.

The problem comes from the fact that naming and language are
tools for communication, not necessarily for categorisation. The two
are, of course, closely linked, but they are different. Categorisation
groups similar things together so that our brains can save some effort
in processing the masses of sensory input they constantly receive.
Communication, on the other hand, is about sharing an understanding
(at least, that will do as a working definition). This means that when I
am communicating with somebody, I will choose words that I think
they will understand. If I use words that the other person does not
understand, then communication will fail.

Most languages contain at least a few synonymous words. To represent
any particular concept I can usually think of multiple ways to
phrase the idea. This is particularly evident in the English language.
“English retains probably the richest vocabulary, and most diverse
shading of meaning, of any language.…No other language has so
many words all saying the same thing” 6. So,
when I communicate, I will ideally try and phrase things in a way that
I think you will understand.

The potential for problems here is enormous. When I speak to you,
something rather complicated is going on:

I know something

I attempt to translate from my category structure to words I think you will understand

You hear what I say

You map the words I use onto your own category structure.

And, of course, I can only guess (perhaps very well, perhaps not)
at what you will or will not understand. I do not know exactly what
category structures my words will evoke in your mind. When I use
the word ‘bird’, for example, I may not know what kinds of birds
you have experienced. If you have only ever seen penguins, then your
understanding of ‘bird’ will differ from mine.

Often we try and get around this by introducing redundancies. We
say the same thing a number of different ways in the hope that our
intended meaning will become clearer. That is why we have so many
similes–each one with slightly different shades of meaning. Repeating
ourselves certainly can help, but it can also introduce more potential
for miscommunication, since the process is repeated all over again.

Unfortunately for our attempts to communicate, this means that
language is always one step removed from what we know. And it is
this kind of idea that gives rise to street-level ideas of post-modernism.
That is, when we read or hear something, we can never fully grasp
what the author or speaker really means. All we can do is take their
words and interpret them according to our own understanding. This
leads one to ask the question ‘Does it really matter then, what the
author intended, since people will interpret things their own way
anyhow?’ Given the plethora of homonyms, synonyms and colloquialisms
in most languages, it is entirely possible to construct a meaning
completely different from what the author intended (not that we can
ever know what the author intended anyhow).

If all our understanding arises from context, environment and culture,
then changing context, environment or culture changes understanding.
What I understand as true and obvious may be completely
different to someone who has grown up in a different culture and
environment; especially if they speak a different language. One could
be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that words are essentially
arbitrary constructions that the listener manipulates to suit their own
understanding of the world, regardless of what they hear.

I would argue, however, that not all of our understanding arises from
culture and environment. Nor is knowledge restricted to arrangements
of words. Not everything is relative. I will address this later. For
the moment, we see that language has a complex relationship with
knowledge, which adds to our difficulties in communicating.

Categorisation and social relations

There is yet another layer of complexity to communication and knowledge.
I said earlier that categorisation is the fundamental building
block of knowing anything. This includes ourselves and other people.
We categorise other people (unconsciously and automatically) into
groups, and this determines how we expect them to act, and how we
act towards them. Further, we also categorise ourselves as being part
of various groups. This is a central theme of social psychology.

How we categorise other people, and how we categorise ourselves,
changes the way we understand the world. McGarty 7 uses the
example of a football match to illustrate this:

Imagine you are going to watch a football match at a
stadium between a team you support and a traditional
rival. In order to understand the game you would, at the
very least, need to categorize the players as belonging
to different teams. To avoid being arrested you would
need to categorize yourself as a spectator and not as a
player. These categorizations are relatively obvious and
may require little if any conscious thought on your part.
More interestingly, however, you may come to categorize
yourself as a supporter of one of the teams.

If you are like most supporters, as incidents occur on the
field you will come to classify decisions by the referee or
umpire as fair or unfair (and hence to be met with silence
or derision) and segments of play as worthy of comment,
applause or silence. You may well notice that many of your
classifications seem to shared by other people who support
the same team as you.

However, you could also hardly fail to notice that the
classifications that you share with other supporters of your
team seem to be keenly contested by the opposition supporters.
They seem to classify fair decisions as worthy of
derision and often greet examples of the most scintillating
play with stony silence. However, rather than being puzzled
by this disagreement we actually expect this perverse
behaviour from the opposition.

We create social identities based on how we categorise ourselves,
and how we categorise others. This allows us to predict how people
will behave, as with the opposition supporters in the football example.
This in turn allows us to describe peoples’ behaviour as ‘strange’ or
‘unusual’ if they do not behave in the way we expect. It also allows
us to know what behaviour to expect of ourselves. For example, if I
identify myself as a male, this has significant implications for which
toilet I use in public buildings.

The process of categorising other people is called stereotyping. In
modern usage, this tends to have negative connotations, alluding to
racism or discrimination. And certainly, stereotyping is the mental
mechanism that allows racism and discrimination. However, in the
context of cognitive science, stereotyping refers simply to categorising
people, not to the inferences we draw from our stereotypes.

However, racism and discrimination serve to demonstrate the profound
power embedded in how we categorise ourselves and each other.
Bowker and Star8 explore this in great detail, looking at examples
including race categorisations under Apartheid and the classification
of tuberculosis patients. Other examples include whether someone is
categorised as ‘homosexual’, or ‘disabled’, or an ‘academic’, or a ‘professional’.
Even seemingly simple categories such as ‘alive’ or ‘dead’
and ‘male’ or ‘female’ can have profound consequences for how we
treat people.

In the context of communication and knowledge, this has particular
relevance when we consider our ability to evaluate information. Human
beings have the ability to both mistakenly believe something, and
to deceive others. We also have the ability to evaluate information and
make decisions about whether we accept or reject it as true. The way
we categorise a particular speaker (or text) has a significant impact on
how we evaluate what they say. Categorising someone as a ‘scientist’,
‘mentally ill’, or a ‘con man’ implies certain assumptions about the
reliability of what they say.

This goes beyond simply understanding what somebody else wishes
to communicate. This brings in questions of expertise and motivation.
Categorising someone as a ‘scientist’ implies that they have authority
to speak about their particular area of research. Categorising somebody
as a ‘con man’ implies that he may try to deceive me because he
is motivated by a desire to get my money. My understanding of a
person’s expertise and motivation has a significant impact on how I
evaluate what they say.

My self-perception also has a significant impact on how I evaluate an
idea. Imagine for a moment that I am a nuclear physicist in discussion
with a ten-year-old child. If that child tells me that atoms are made
of (very) small fish that like to kiss each other, this may well conflict
with my understanding of atomic structure. I am likely to evaluate the
claim based on:

Whether the claim fits with my understanding of atomic structure;

My estimation of the child’s expertise and motivation; and,

My estimation of my own expertise.

Since I consider myself (a nuclear physicist) an expert in atomic
structure, it is most likely that I would reject the small fish claim. If the
situation were reversed, and a nuclear physicist told me, a ten-year-old
child, that atoms were made of small fish, then my decision to accept
or reject the idea would likely be very different.

So we now have two layers to the communication problem:

The problem of understanding. Because our experiences are subjective and tied to our bodies, I can never completely understand what another person wishes to communicate. The categories they invoke in my mind may be similar to the categories in their own, however, their category structures will have been formed by experiences entirely different to mine. Furthermore, the structure of the categories in both our minds changes as we experience the world. This introduces even further sources of variation in our understanding.

The problem of evaluation. In addition to understanding what someone is trying to communicate, there is also the problem of evaluating the truth of their understanding. It is entirely possible that a person talking to me has a mistaken understanding. It is also possible that they are trying to deceive me. So, I am required to make a decision as to whether I accept or reject the authority of the person communicating with me. There are no guarantees as to whether my decision will reflect reality.

In the next section we will examine why communication is possible,
in spite of the problem of understanding. The second problem, that
of evaluation, I will leave for the philosophers to discuss, since it is
outside my area of expertise.

Embodied Foundations of Knowledge

So are we doomed to complete subjectivity? The basis of our understanding
anything is through the category structures and cognitive
models in our minds. These are not hard-wired, but based entirely on
our experience of the world through a body. Our experience of the
world varies hugely across various cultures, languages and geographies.
Not even our bodies are the same, but male differs from female
and our bodies have larger or smaller bits, and some of us even have
bits missing. How can we ever hope to understand anything another
person communicates?

Conceptual metaphors

In spite of the variations in our experiences, we all have two things in
common.

Firstly, we all have a brain (more or less). If we don’t have a brain
then we die. Our brains are quite similar too. Most of us have a
cerebral cortex, limbic system, cerebellum etc. and they all have fairly
specific roles. The basic architecture is much the same for everyone.
This means that our brains work in quite similar ways.

Secondly, we all have a body (more or less). Our bodies may not all
have the same bits, but we all have some sort of body. Again, if we
don’t have one, we die. Our bodies all come from a roughly similar
blue-print, even if there are infinite variations. Having two legs, two
arms, a face and hands is fairly common amongst human beings. And
having these various appendages shapes the way our brains function
because all the input a brain receives, it receives from the body.
These commonalities mean that we all have a few basic concepts
that are pretty much the same for everybody. For example, because
the vast majority of us have eyes on only one side of our body, we
have a concept of back and front. The structure of our eyes, arms and
legs means that we are much more easily able to interact with things
in front of us. Thus, if I talk about something being in front of me, then
you have a pretty good idea of where it is, because we have a common
concept of what front means.

There are quite a number of fairly basic categories and concepts
that are common to nearly everybody. Because we have a body which
can move, and can move other things, we all have a few basic spatial-relation
concepts9. Another example is in/out. I can walk into a
building; or out of a village; or into a garden; or out of a bathroom.
Yet another example is paths, roads and passages. Almost all of us
move between areas where there is food, areas where we sleep, and
areas where we do other things. To get from one place to another I
will follow some sort of route. This is another reasonably common
concept.10

Interestingly though, we also project these bodily concepts to other
things. For example, we don’t just think of people as having fronts
and backs. We also attribute fronts and backs to objects like animals,
cars, houses and televisions. Animals have eyes, so we attribute them
with a front. Buildings often have a main entrance, so we call that side
of the building the front.

We even use front and back concepts for things with no front/backdefining
features. For example, we say things like ‘I’m in front of the
tree’, or ‘she was behind the rock’. The tree or rock only has a front
or back in relation to where I am standing. But since we are used to
‘facing’ other human beings, we can talk (and think) as if trees or rocks
also had fronts or backs and they are facing us.

We also make metaphorical mappings from bodily concepts to abstract
concepts. For example, we commonly talk about emotional states
as if they were bounded regions of space. I might say ‘I’m coming out
of a depression’, or ’He’s not in a good state’. These mappings are not
just linguistic conventions—they are basic building blocks of how we
think. We know that emotional states are not really physical locations,
but we have no other way of thinking about abstract concepts, except
in terms of things we have already experienced.

These projections of bodily concepts onto other things are called
conceptual metaphors11. These metaphors form the building blocks of
most of our reasoning. We build cognitive models of how the world
works based on a number of primary metaphors that we learn from
a very young age. Primary metaphors are used to build complex
metaphors, providing us with mental models of how things work.

The possibility of communication

Communication is possible, even though different people may have
very different conceptual systems. It is just difficult.

The way people think varies greatly between cultures because there
are many ways to form a conceptual mapping from bodily experience
to abstract concept. For example, in English, when I say ‘The elephant
is in front of the tree’, I mean that the elephant is between the tree
and myself. In the Hasua language, saying the Elephant is in front on
the tree would mean the opposite: That the elephant was on the other
side of the tree12. In Hasua, ‘front’ means facing the same direction I
am. Both are valid ways of conceptualising orientation.

In spite of this, even though the mapping from bodily concept to
abstract concept is largely influenced by culture and environment,
bodily concepts remain much the same. Also, because we have common
needs for things like food, clothing and shelter, many other basic
experiences are the same regardless of culture and environment.

Within my own culture, surrounded by people who have enormous
amounts of similar experiences to me, and share similar conceptual
systems, communication is relatively easy. Problems still arise, for
example, I might assume someone has experienced something in
common with me, when they have not. And there are always slight
variations in our experiences. On the whole, however, our conceptual
systems are fairly similar and it is possible to make sense of each
other.

Across cultures and languages, the task is much more difficult,
but still possible because of universal bodily experiences. Even if
someone’s conceptual system is radically different from my own, it is
still possible for me to understand another person’s way of thinking.
Our brains are flexible enough to learn new conceptual metaphors.
We can even think about the same concept using multiple, mutually
inconsistent metaphors. So it is possible for us to learn to see things
differently.

Communication is possible. Certainly, some things will be impossible
for me to understand until I have experienced them and lived in
the culture. There will always be some concepts however, like spatialrelations,
that I can learn because I have a body, just like everyone else.
So then, communication is possible, but it is difficult and will never
be a perfect transfer from mind to mind.

Implications for theology

What are the implications of this understanding of knowledge and
communication? In their books, Lackoff and Johnson13,14,15,16 draw
some far-reaching conclusions for philosophy, politics and ‘morality’.
The things I discuss here are really just the tip of the iceberg. I will
begin with some of the conclusions that Lackoff and Johnson draw
themselves, then move on to some of my own thoughts on embodied
knowledge and theology.

Lackoff and Johnson on ‘morality’

What do Lakoff and Johnson think about God? While they detail
at length how their research and understanding challenges modern
philosophy on many different fronts, they are largely silent about
religion. I can only speculate as to why this is. Perhaps they wish
to avoid treading on others’ personal treasured beliefs—although
they seem to have no qualms about suggesting the basis for much
philosophical reasoning is flawed. Perhaps they simply operate with
an implicit assumption that there is no God, and thus they do not
need to say anything about it. I don’t know.

Lakoff and Johnson do have a lot to say about morality, however.
In Moral Politics, Lakoff argues that all of American politics is based
around morality, and most moral reasoning centres around conceptions
of the ideal family. This, he argues, explains why the conservative
right and liberal left cannot understand each other; they conceptualise
morality in completely different ways. It is an interesting read, but
American politics is slightly outside the sphere of my discussion here.

In Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson devote a whole chapter
to ‘Morality’. They analyse the metaphorical bases for moral reasoning
and thinking, then show how these metaphors are tied together
by conceptions of what the ideal family is like. They propose two
‘ideal’ models, one called the ‘Strict Father’ model, and the other the
‘Nurturant Parent’ model. In Moral Politics Lakoff equates the strict
father model with conservative (right wing) politics, and the nurturant
parent model with liberal (left wing) politics. In Philosophy in the Flesh,
Lakoff and Johnson extend this to ‘Christian Ethics’. This is what they
have to say:

In monotheistic religions, […] the moral authority is
God the Father Almighty, creator and sustainer of all that
is and source of all that is good. On the Strict Father interpretation,
God is the stern and unforgiving lawgiver who
rewards the righteous and punishes wrongdoers. The key
to living morally is to hear God’s commandments and to
align one’s will with God’s will. This requires great moral
strength, because one has to overcome the assaults of the
Devil and the temptations of the flesh.

When God is conceived as Nurturant Parent (sometimes
as Mother), he is the all-loving, all-merciful protector and
nurturer of his people. God is Love, and, in the Christian
tradition, Jesus is the bearer of that nurturant and sacrificing
love for all humankind. Although there is a place for
moral law (“Think not that I come to abolish the law and
the prophets; I come not to abolish but to fulfill,” Matthew
5:17), moral commandment and law are not the central focus.
Instead, morality is about developing “purity of heart”
so that, through empathy, we will reach out to others in
acts of love. 17

This, in and of itself, is relatively harmless. We all know that there
are conservative types of Christians, and liberal types of Christians,
just like there are conservative and liberal politicians. Most of us
also know that going to one extreme or the other misses the point of
Christianity. In fact, speaking about Christianity as if it is primarily
about morality and being good, rather than being about Christ, also
misses the point. Yes, Christianity does have a lot to say about morality
(as do Lakoff and Johnson). Indeed, one of the central claims of
Christianity is that we have all failed morally. But, the point of that
claim is that our moral failure separates us from God. God is the goal
of the Christian, not a moral life.

But it is understandable that Lakoff and Johnson would misunderstand
what Christianity is really about. Many (perhaps most) people
who call themselves Christians make the same error. It is particularly
understandable given that they are writing in a North American
context where ‘evangelicalism’ has become greatly mixed up with
right-wing politics. In this view of things, developing ‘purity of heart’
is what matters, so it wouldn’t make all that much difference if God
did not exist. The story and example of Jesus makes for a beautiful
demonstration of a ‘good’ (moral) way to live. Unfortunately, to hold
this view, one has to ignore a large amount of what Jesus says about
himself in the four gospels.

The death of objective morality?

In another chapter of Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson discuss
conclusions after their critique of western philosophy. In one instance
they make a point which I must disagree with:

[There is no] “Higher” Morality: Our concepts of what
is moral, like all our other concepts, originate from the
specific nature of human embodied experience. Our conceptions
of morality cannot be objective or derive from a
“higher source.”18

In one sense, this statement is correct. That is, our concepts of what
is moral are based on human embodied experience. Therefore, whenever
we think about morality, we are using metaphorical reasoning.
Hence, we cannot claim that our moral reasoning directly reflects some
objective, external source. But the implication of this statement is that,
therefore, God is completely excluded from moral understanding. To
put it another way: because I can explain that moral concepts come
from embodied experiences, they cannot reflect an objective moral
reality.

Perhaps this is not what Lakoff and Johnson intend, but it is certainly
easy to read the statement that way. And the argument is flawed.
Showing that we understand something metaphorically is not the
same as showing that what we understand does not exist. By the
same reasoning I can say that our understanding of atoms is based
on metaphorical conceptions of balls and clouds (Figure 3.1). These
are entirely based on embodied experiences—how atomic structure
has been taught to us, and our experiences of balls and clouds. Our
conceptions of atoms therefore cannot be objective or derive from
‘reality’.

Two models of a helium atom: Atoms as little balls; and atoms as clouds.

Of course, the physicist will argue that there is more to atoms than
the metaphors we use to conceptualise them. We have empirical evidence
which gives us cause to believe that atoms exist and behave in
certain ways. Similarly, Christians argue that understanding conceptual
metaphors for morality does not necessarily mean that they have
no higher source. We look to other evidence (primarily Jesus, and the
documents about him in the bible) to examine our moral conceptions.

If God does exist, and he defines an objective moral reality, then
understanding conceptual metaphor does imply that it is possible to
have conceptions of morality that are wrong, or inaccurate. In fact, the
bible argues that unless God intervenes, all our conceptions of morality
are definitely warped from the reality he defines19. As Christians, we
believe that Christ came to do something about that very problem.

Limitations of human reason

One thing that comes out of Lakoff and Johnson’s analysis, almost
as an aside, is that there are limits to what we can know because our
reasoning is metaphorically based. That is, because we experience the
world entirely through our bodies, we cannot really understand things
that cannot be conceptualised bodily. This is not to say that we cannot
engage in any kind of abstract thought, but rather that our range of
senses, and therefore our conceptual ability, is limited.

By its very nature, it is very difficult to give an example of this—how
can I give an example of something I completely fail to comprehend?
The nearest I can think is the example of a photon. According to
Wikipedia, “the photon is the elementary particle responsible for
electromagnetic phenomena”20—in particular, light21. We know that
photons of light exhibit wave-like properties and particle-like properties
at the same time. This is almost impossible to conceptualise
because we do not experience anything like this through our bodily
senses. Yet, these properties have been well documented. Even this is
a poor example, however, since we can conceptualise both light and
particles.

Applying this to street-level theology, this may be one of the reasons
people find the doctrine of free-will versus predestination so confusing.
In our conceptual models of causality, if something is predestined,
choice does not exist, hence we do not have free will. The bible holds
that we are morally responsible for our choice to accept or reject God.
Yet, at the same time, it holds that God predestines some people for
salvation (and, by implication, not others).

What is going on here? In western thinking, a primary metaphor
we use to understand free will is freedom-of-motion. That is, freedom
of motion implies a lack of physical constraints so that I can move
wherever I wish. We map this bodily experience onto our concept of
freedom-of-choice. If I am in gaol, then I do not have freedom because
I cannot move about as I wish. I am constrained.

At the same time we also think of causes as physical forces. This
is based on the bodily experience of achieving results by exerting
forces on physical objects to move or change them. By coupling this
metaphor with the freedom of motion metaphor, phrases such as ‘I
had no choice—I was forced to go that way’ make sense. The phrase
would make sense equally well if spoken by a prisoner, or of a man
declaring bankruptcy. In the case of the bankrupt man, there is no
actual physical force, nor is bankruptcy a literal direction of motion,
but we understand these things metaphorically.

A common way to conceptualise predestination is as being forced
to take a certain path (or paths) so that we arrive at a particular
destination. The word ‘predestination’ even contains the metaphorical
concept ‘destination’. So, if I am predestined, then my journey through
life is constrained so that I reach a certain destination.

For myself, this conjures up images of train tracks. In Figure 3.2, a
train travels from A to F. It does not matter which path the train takes
(ABF, ADF, ACDF, ACEF), the destination is fixed. The tracks force
the train to a certain destination.

Railroad tracks as a metaphor for predestination: No matter which
path is followed, the end destination is still the same.

It is difficult for us to conceptualise freedom and predestination in
any other way. However, causes are not always physical forces and do
not always work like physical forces. Neither does predestination, in
the biblical sense, lead us to a physical location. Freedom of choice is
not the same as freedom from physical constraint.
Further compounding the problem is that we often hold a folk
theory of single causes. That is, that there is a single actor that can be
blamed for causing an event. The folk theory is easily demonstrated
to be false. A common example is the question ‘Did slavery cause
the American civil war?’. A yes or no will not suffice to answer it.

To give another example, imagine that I see a billboard advertising a
particular soft drink. The advertisement appeals to me, so I then go
and buy a bottle of the drink. Now, who is responsible for me buying
the drink? Was it the advertiser? If I had not seen the billboard, then I
would not have bought the drink. Yet, I still made the decision to buy
the drink myself. The advertiser did not force me to do anything. Who
is at fault? Both of us, and neither of us. Causality is not that simple.

It would be a mistake to extend the metaphor of advertisement
to understanding predestination. God is not like the advertiser, and
becoming a Christian is not like buying a bottle of soft drink. Yet the
point remains that the metaphors we use to understand free-will and
causality are limited. Our reasoning is limited by the metaphors that
enable us to think about abstract concepts. Our minds are flexible
enough to learn new metaphors, and thus broaden our capacity for
understanding, but thinking will always be metaphorical.

The God who communicates

Another implication of the limitation of human reason is that there
are things we simply cannot know about God. If God is transcendent,
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc., then we will always have
trouble understanding God’s perspective. We have no experience of
what it is like to be omnipresent or omniscient, and we can only
conceptualise them in terms of things we already know. Hence, like
the mystics before us, we are forced to admit that such a God is beyond
us: inconceivable; indescribable; unfathomable. How can embodied,
finite beings ever hope to understand a God who is infinite spirit?
Yet Christians believe that the transcendent, infinite God can, and
does, communicate with us. We make a big deal out of the bible,
because we believe that it is communication from God himself. God
has made himself known through intelligible words and language.
Leaving aside questions of how we got the bible in its current form,
there are still difficulties. Communicating with someone in my own
culture and environment is problematic enough. Most of the bible was
written more than 2000 years ago in places and cultures completely
alien from my own situation. Understanding a communication from a
transcendent God, written by people in completely different cultures
and times is always going to be a difficult job.

And when I read the bible myself, I find that it is difficult to understand…
but not impossible. It helps to understand the culture and
times in which the book was written. If I can understand how the
people in those times and places thought, then I have a better chance
of understanding the book I am reading. For example, I had no idea
why the book of Revelation included this verse:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea existed no longer.
—Revelation 21:1 (HCSB), emphasis mine

The sea is beautiful, powerful, majestic. It speaks of God’s beauty,
God’s power, God’s majesty. When I sit by the ocean and feel its
amazing size and see the power of the waves, I am humbled and
realise how small I am in comparison to the God who made the ocean.
How could there be no sea in the new heaven and earth?

The phrase made no sense until I read a commentary. The commentary
informed me that in Jewish thinking, the sea was symbolic of
chaos and disorder. It was frightening and unpredictable. People died
at sea. And the symbolism goes all the way back to the creation story:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered
the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was
hovering over the surface of the waters.
—Genesis 1:2 (HCSB)

When God created the universe, he spoke into the chaos and darkness,
bringing order and light. I now understand that when it says
‘the sea existed no longer’, it is indicating that creation has reached
fulfilment and chaos and darkness have been eliminated.

The upshot is that understanding communication across 2000+ years
will require hard work. But surely if this communication really is from
God, it is worth the effort. If we received a message from outer-space
indicating that alien life existed, then I imagine we would spare no
amount of effort to decode it and understand it. It would be worth the
effort to find out what people from another world had to say. How
much more important should it be when the creator of the universe
sends us a message?

An embodied God?

If understanding the bible is made difficult because of temporal, geographic
and cultural differences, it becomes even more difficult when
I try and understand things from the perspective of a transcendent
God—one who has always existed, is everywhere, knows everything,
and is all powerful. We said earlier that all humans have a couple
of things in common: a body and a brain. The Almighty is spirit.
Spirits, by definition, don’t have bodies. They don’t inhabit the world
of matter. How then can we hope to understand him?

Of course, Christians believe that, in Jesus, God became a man with
a body and experienced real, bodily experiences. This is one thing
which differentiates Christianity from most other religions. God didn’t
just make himself look like a man for a little while in order to have
sex with a particularly pretty female who took his fancy—no, he was
born to a real mother, and lived as a real human being. He lived the
whole thing as one of us—birth to death, and then some.

…Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did
not consider equality with God as something to be used
for His own advantage. Instead He emptied Himself by
assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men.
And when He had come as a man in His external form,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death—even to death on a cross.
—Philippians 2:5–8 (HCSB)

Because of Jesus, God himself knows, from personal experience,
what it is like to have a human body. He knows what it is to only
be able to see in one direction; to have eyeballs and ears and to feel
hungry. But it also works the other way. In Jesus, God did more than
answer the ‘what if God was one of us?’ question. In Jesus, God shows
us what he is like in a way that we can understand.

Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at
different times and in different ways. In these last days, He
has spoken to us by [His] Son, whom He has appointed
heir of all things and through whom He made the universe.
He is the radiance of His glory, the exact expression of His
nature, and He sustains all things by His powerful word.
After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right
hand of the Majesty on high.
—Hebrews 1:1–3 (HCSB)

“God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of
lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light,
whom no one has seen or can see”22—this God has made himself
known by becoming a human being. In Christ we see the visible image
of the invisible God.23

So, God himself answered the question of how a transcendent,
spiritual God could communicate about himself to finite, embodied
mortals. The immortal took on mortal flesh and showed himself to
us. We can know God because he has made himself known. It may
still be difficult, but so is learning to speak another language. Surely
learning to see things God’s way takes even more of a mental shift,
but is much, much more rewarding in the end.

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. [1999], Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York. ↩

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. [1999], Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York. ↩

Actually, the concepts I have described here are made up of conceptual models that are even more basic, but going into all the detail would take too long here. See Lakoff and Johnson for more information. ↩

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. [1980], Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 2003 reprint with new afterword. ↩

Lakoff, G. [1987], Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, The University of Chicago press, Chicago. ↩

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. [1980], Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 2003 reprint with new afterword. ↩

Lakoff, G. [1987], Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, The University of Chicago press, Chicago. ↩

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. [1999], Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York. ↩